The climate denial think tanks of Tufton St remain deeply embedded in the rightwing press who continue to welcome incendiary op-eds from their spokespeople which spread disinformation – all under the ‘protection’ of Ipso which has no protocols against inaccuracy when purveyed in commentary pieces.
Brian Cathcart of the Byline Times said of Ipso: “It is a fig leaf, a trick perpetrated on the public by the leading UK papers […]. In reality it is designed, not to curb unethical journalistic conduct, but to enable it.”
Why, then, does this unvalidated body still hold sway?
Capitulation
The second part of the Leveson inquiry was supposed to have examined the relationship between journalists and the police and, in 2018, Labour’s Ed Miliband spearheaded calls for its revival.
He accused the Conservative government of breaking its promise due to “fear about the wrath of the press […] Fear of the powerful is not a good reason to allow them to trample on the powerless … it goes against everything we promised in 2010, everything we said to the victims.”
However, following the election, when asked about the status of Leveson Part Two, Lisa Nandy, the Labour culture secretary, fudged that it was “not something that we committed to in the manifesto.”
Nathan Sparkes, CEO of Hacked Off, reacted to this backtracking as follows: “The Labour Party made cast-iron commitments to the victims of the phone hacking and press abuse scandals in 2012 to proceed with Leveson Part Two and introduce independent regulation.
“Breaking those promises and throwing hundreds of ordinary people abused by newspaper groups under the bus would represent a capitulation to the press barons, and a total failure of integrity at Number 10.”
Partisanship
Miliband’s statement echoed widespread concerns that the previous government’s reluctance to proceed with Leveson Part Two was driven by pressure from the media, rather than a commitment to the public interest.
But as night follows day, in the run up to the election, we saw our supine about-to-be prime minister Keir Starmer follow the preordained path and make the time-honoured pact with the devil of Fleet St.
Neither does the new broom give any indication of concern over the partiality of broadcast regulator Ofcom, currently chaired by Lord Grade. His key credential seems to have been a willingness to declare war against “woke warrior apparatchiks”.
This sentiment is very much in tune with the far right pontifications of GB News, the channel described by Jennie King, from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank, as a “central hub for climate scepticism in the British media”.
Despite such obvious partisanship, Grade remains in post.
Influence
Then there is the BBC, the national broadcaster and bastion of impartiality. Roger Harrabin, once the BBC’s veteran environment correspondent, said after retirement: “In recent years the BBC has been much more generous with the amount of time allocated on air to people from the far right than the far left – but I had to leave the BBC to tell that simple truth.”
This censoring of reporting that might have clashed with Conservative government policy was undoubtedly the remit of Robbie Gibb, embedded as an editorial enforcer by Theresa May in 2017.
Gibb was described by Emily Maitlis as an “active agent of the Conservative Party”. The warning “Robbie is watching you” was often whispered in corridors when journalists were noticed straying off-message.
Journalist Lewis Goodall claimed Gibb reframed impartiality as relativistic: hardly surprising given that Gibb had been an editorial advisor for GB News. Gibb remains in post.
We should not forget those elevated to the House of Lords by the previous government, where there remains a staunch Conservative majority, who continue to have undue influence over policy in the second chamber.
Doubt
This caucus includes Charles Moore, the former editor of The Telegraph who has been a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) since 2015.
Moore has regularly criticised the UK’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, writing in an article in The Telegraph that the term “climate emergency [was] invented to persuade government to coerce public opinion.” He also suggested that “Britain could copy [Donald] Trump’s bonfire of controls, igniting it with good old fossil fuels.”
Claire Fox, who leads the anti-regulation Institute of Ideas think tank, is another key contrarian. Fox is part of a libertarian network centred around the website Spiked which, as DeSmog revealed in 2018, has received funding from Koch industries.
She has frequently dismissed mainstream climate science, arguing it would be a “betrayal of scientific inquiry” to treat the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as “high priests of The Science and final word on climate.”
Other obscurantists and welcome contributors to the rightwing press include Michael Spencer, recently appointed chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank that has also cast doubt on climate science, and Nigel Dodds, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in the Lords, who actively worked to block the introduction of a Climate Change Act in Northern Ireland.
Notorious
Tories all, with stances to be expected. But, disturbingly, Maurice Glasman, a Labour peer described as an intellectual guru for the Labour Party, is embedded in this caucus.
Glasman was made a peer by Ed Miliband but was also the only Labour figure to attend Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, having developed a personal friendship with JD Vance.
He sits on the advisory board of The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a far right consortium of climate deniers launched by Jordan Peterson in 2023, which includes in its ranks the likes of Douglas Murray and science denialist Bjorn Lomborg.
The ARC line is that “petrochemicals […] will keep us going for at least the next hundred years and probably longer.”
Yet Glasman remains close to the heart of power. Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, proclaimed that: “Morgan is one of ours, we love him.”
It is a measure of the influence of this cohort that, before COP 26, the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee invited John Constable of the GWPF to give evidence on climate policy during which he called, not only for increased fossil fuel extraction and nuclear but also for the tailing off of current renewable energy provision.
Leo Hickman, director and editor of Carbon Brief, tweeted in response: “If this Lords committee really think GWPF are ‘experts’, then perhaps they can start proceedings by asking these notorious climate change sceptic lobbyists to name who funds them – something they have refused to reveal for the 12 years since their launch.”
READ THE PREQUEL: THEY WALK AMONG US
Revolution
This essay highlights climate denial and spin—whether as an aspect of government corruption, or how it’s reported.
Today’s media ecosystem – across social, corporate, and state platforms – has been captured by a handful of powerful actors: billionaire owners, political fixers, and advertisers. They use this control to advance narrow, often toxic agendas at the expense of truth and public interest.
Frustration among those committed to honest reporting has reached boiling point in the UK. The media’s capture by vested interests and a broken regulatory landscape are barriers we must overcome in order to tell and hear objective truth – whether about climate breakdown or the cynically fomented culture wars dominating public discourse on a raft of issues of our times.
If democracy is to survive, this must be challenged. Media Revolution, launched in October 2024, is a collaborative, self-organised working group created to do exactly that. If you would like to know more, find us at Media Revolution.
This Author
Tom Hardy FRSA has over 40 years of experience in education, serving as literary editor for the International Journal of Art and Design Education, as columnist for the Times Educational Supplement, and author/editor of several academic works on educational practice. He has worked as an education consultant for the Prince’s Teaching Institute and subject lead for the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency reporting to the Department for Education. He now works with Media Revolution.